BELGRADE, 13 June 2004 — Five years after the UN and NATO intervened to end the war in Kosovo, Belgrade insists the international mission has been a “stinging failure” and is demanding a change of strategy.
Serbia’s frustration with the international community’s role in the southern ethnic-Albanian dominated province peaked after a wave of mob violence against Serbs in March which left 19 people dead.
“It is evident that after the recent violence the international community must count the costs of the stinging failure of its policies in Kosovo,” said Dragan Marsicanin, a senior figure in the ruling coalition.
As well as the 19 people killed, over 900 were injured during the March riots that lasted for two days and forced some 4,000 people, mostly Serbs, from their homes.
Over 800 houses were torched along with 19 Serb Orthodox churches and monasteries. It was the worst ethnic violence in Kosovo since the end of the 1998-99 war, when Serb forces were accused of trying to drive out Albanians.
Kosovo’s outgoing UN mission chief, Harri Holkeri, warned Thursday the security situation there was “very fragile” and the province could turn into a hotbed for terrorism if it was abandoned by the international community.
“If the international community gives up, what would it be? That would be a carte blanche for terrorism, for violence... all kinds of actions against humanity,” Holkeri said.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visited the breakaway province last Monday for the second time since the anti-Serb riots, said a society plagued by such ethnic violence “does not belong to Europe”.
The role of the UN and NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo once divided nationalists and moderates in Serbian politics but now there is unanimous agreement across the political spectrum that the intervention has failed.
Serbia is now demanding a dramatic change in strategy to allow the province to be “decentralized” between Serb and Albanian areas — an idea that has been criticized as amounting to the ethnic division of Kosovo.
This policy, announced by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica earlier this year, has been unanimously adopted by the Serbian Parliament and is seen here as the only practical solution to ensure security for the Serbs.
It would grant extended powers to five enclaves where Serbs were in the majority before their postwar exodus, when more than 200,000 fled in fear of reprisal attacks by the Albanian majority.
Only around 80,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, out of a total population in the province of some 1.8 million. NATO troops who are supposed to ensure security were completely overwhelmed by the organized mob violence in March.
Marsicanin said the decentralization plan was the “only solution” which could “stabilize the region” in accord with UN Resolution 1244, which established the UN protectorate in Kosovo.
The plan has won the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who described it as a “very good base for work” after meeting Kostunica last week.
Western European leaders have been far more cautious. However one Western diplomat in Belgrade told AFP that Kostunica’s plan was a “good point of departure” and that the “decentralization of Kosovo is inevitable”. Kosovo Albanian Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi has condemned the idea as an emotional response to the March violence and a way of dividing the province or reintegrating it with Serbia.
The ethnic Albanian leadership of Kosovo demands nothing short of independence, however the province remains technically part of Serbia and its “final status” will be decided by the Security Council.
